The Gate House

by Nelson DeMille

  “I don’t know.”

  “I aimed for his heart. But he moved.”

  I had no comment on that, but I did say, “You’re very brave, and very smart.”

  She took another sip of brandy and said, “I wasn’t too smart when I opened the door.”

  “I probably would have done the same thing.”

  She didn’t reply, but I saw she was looking at the shotgun on the couch.

  She said to me, “We should check on him. Before the police arrive.”

  I thought, of course, about Frank Bellarosa, lying on the floor in Giulio’s, his carotid artery spurting blood. Stop the bleeding. That was rule one of basic first aid. So I stopped the bleeding. He lived, and here we were, ten years later, dealing with the consequences.

  Susan stood and walked toward the shotgun on the couch.

  “Susan.”

  She looked at me and said, “Before you got here . . . he said to me—you and your husband think you’re so fucking smart, so fucking above—”

  “I know what he said.”

  “So fucking high and mighty . . . well, he said, when I get through with you, you’re never going to be the same again . . . and your fucking husband is never going to look at you the same again . . . and you can live with that, bitch, the way I live with thinking about you killing my father . . .” She picked up the shotgun and said, “And he told me I might like it so much, I might want to do it with him again.”

  I stood and moved between her and the door. I said, “You can’t do that. I won’t let you.”

  She stared at me, the shotgun cradled in her arm, then said, “I am so sorry, John, for everything that has happened to us.”

  “That subject is closed.”

  “Are you sorry you saved Frank’s life?”

  I was, and I wasn’t. I said to her, “I did the right thing.”

  “It was the wrong thing.”

  I looked at her and asked, “Did you think so at the time?”

  She didn’t reply for a few seconds, then said, “No. But afterwards . . . I wished you’d let him die. And now . . . we’re not going to make that same mistake.”

  I put out my hand and said, “Give me the gun.”

  She pushed the shotgun toward me and said, “He threatened our children. So you take care of it.”

  I hesitated, then took the shotgun from her. We made eye contact, and she said, “Do this for Edward and Carolyn.”

  I’d thought about killing Anthony, and I would have without a second thought when he was a threat to us. But killing a wounded man in cold blood was not the same. And yet . . . if he lived . . . there would be an investigation, a public trial, testimony about what happened here . . . and there’d always be that threat hanging over us . . . but if he was dead . . . well, dead was dead. Dead was simple.

  I took a deep breath and said, “I’ll check on him.”

  I carried the shotgun into the foyer and up the staircase, then stopped at our bedroom door. I checked to see that the selector switch was set to the left barrel—the one that held the heavy-load buckshot, then I opened the door.

  I could see him on the floor, and his chest was still heaving.

  I moved closer, then I knelt beside him.

  His arms were at his sides now, and the blood coming out of his wound had slowed and was no longer frothy with air.

  I looked at his face, which was so white that the stubble on his cheeks looked like black paint. I felt his pulse, then his heart, which was beating very rapidly to compensate for the loss of blood pressure.

  I leaned closer to him and said, “Anthony.”

  His eyelids fluttered.

  “Anthony!” I slapped his face, and his eyes opened.

  We looked at each other. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear anything except a gurgling sound.

  I said to him, “When you get to hell, and you see your father, tell him how you got there, and tell him who shot you. And ask your father for the truth about him leaving his family for Susan. Anthony?” I slapped him again and said, “Can you hear me?”

  His eyes still had some life in them, but I didn’t know if he could hear me over the sound of the rushing in his ears, which happens when the heart is trying to pump the last of the blood through the veins and arteries.

  I said loudly, “And tell your father thanks for doing me that last favor.”

  His eyelids fluttered again, and I knew he’d heard me.

  I kept staring at him. His eyes were wide open now, and they followed my movements, and I had the thought that he might live.

  Susan came into the room, and she looked at me, then at him, but she didn’t say anything.

  I could hear the sound of police sirens outside, and I said to her, “Go and unbolt the door for them. Quickly.”

  “John, you have to do it, or I’ll do it.”

  “Go. I’ll take care of it.”

  She looked again at me, then at Anthony, then turned and left.

  I stared at Anthony, who was showing too many signs of life . . . and it was too late now with the police outside to fire the shotgun.

  I noticed that his blood had coagulated over his wound, and it was seeping, rather than flowing freely. Stop the bleeding . . . Start the bleeding.

  I knelt on his chest, and his eyes opened wide in terror. I stuck my index finger into his wound, pushing down as far as I could into his warm chest cavity, and when I withdrew my finger, his blood gushed up and began flowing again.

  I kept my full weight on his chest, which heaved convulsively, then stopped.

  I stood, went into the bathroom, washed my hands, and threw the shotgun back on the bed.

  When I went downstairs, Susan was standing at the open door. In the forecourt were two police cars and uniformed officers were moving quickly toward the house.

  I put my arm around her shoulder and said, “It’s finished.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  The police searched and secured the premises and determined that there were no other perpetrators present.

  The EMS people, who carried a stretcher upstairs, didn’t carry it downstairs, and a uniformed officer told me, “He’s dead.” The medical examiner, when he arrived, would make that official.

  The police had tagged the weapons as evidence, and the crime scene investigators were on the way to begin the slow, arduous process of turning the scene of a violent personal assault into a neat scientific project.

  While this was going on, a homicide detective by the name of Steve Jones had requisitioned our home office to conduct an interview with me while Susan was taken by EMS vehicle to the sexual assault unit at North Shore University Hospital.

  I wasn’t happy that I hadn’t been allowed to accompany Susan to the hospital, but Detective Jones explained that this was standard operating procedure, to wit: In cases involving serious felonies, witnesses are separated. Well, one size does not fit all, and even though we were witnesses, and even though Susan killed the alleged assailant, we were also obviously crime victims, so I said to Detective Jones, “We will, of course, cooperate fully, but I have to insist that I be present when you interview Mrs. Sutter.” I further explained, “I am an attorney, and I am also her attorney.” I suggested, “It might be a good idea to call Detective Nastasi in the Second Precinct, who took our original complaint about threats that the assailant made against us.”

  Detective Jones considered all that, then left the office to consult with his Homicide Squad supervisor and an assistant district attorney from their Homicide Unit, both of whom had recently arrived. This was, of course, a high-profile case, so Detective Jones, who, I’m certain, usually ran his own investigation, now had to share his duties and power with higher-ups who’d taken over the living room.

  Bottom line on this, when a society lady kills a Mafia don—on her estate or his—the case takes on another dimension, and everyone wants in on it. I remembered this from the last time it happened.

  Detective Jones returned and informed me, �
�Detective Nastasi is on the way.” In response to my other request, he said, “We have no objection to you being present when I interview Mrs. Sutter.”

  “Thank you.”

  Detective Jones then said to me, “As an attorney, you understand that you are a witness to a homicide and possibly more than a witness, so before I take your statement, I need to read you your rights.” He added, “As a formality.”

  I wasn’t completely surprised by this, but I was getting annoyed. On the other hand, there was a corpse lying in my bedroom, and Detective Jones needed to be sure he was dealing with a justifiable homicide. Actually, he wasn’t—I mean, Susan shooting Anthony was borderline justifiable, but me speeding up his death was called murder. I said, “Let me save you the trouble.” Then, from memory, I advised myself of my rights.

  Detective Jones seemed satisfied with that and didn’t ask me if I understood what I just said to myself.

  Before I began my statement, I told Detective Jones that the deceased perpetrator, Anthony Bellarosa by name, had identified his accomplice to me as Tony Rosini, a man who I said was known to me.

  Detective Jones passed this on to another detective, then informed me, “I was one of the detectives who responded to the other Bellarosa homicide ten years ago.”

  I wasn’t quite sure why he mentioned that, but I was still annoyed that Susan and I had been separated, so I replied, “Has it been ten years between Bellarosa murders?”

  He ignored my sarcasm, and I began my statement. Detective Jones wrote it all out longhand on lined paper, though of course I could have typed it on the computer or written it myself. But this is the way it’s always been done, so why introduce new technology?

  I neglected to mention in my statement that I knelt on the assailant’s chest and reopened his wound to make sure he died before the EMS arrived. I mean, Detective Jones didn’t ask, so why should I volunteer?

  All this took over an hour, and after I read my statement, I signed it, as did Detective Jones and another detective, who witnessed my signature.

  I saw a police car pull into the forecourt and a uniformed officer escorted Susan to the front door. Detective Jones went to the door and accompanied Susan into the office.

  We hugged, and she said, “I’m all right. They gave me some sedatives and painkillers and asked me to return tomorrow for a follow-up visit—but I think I’ll see my own physician instead.”

  We were joined in the office by Detective Jones’s supervisor, Lieutenant Kennedy, and also by an assistant district attorney, a young lady named Christine Donnelly, who reminded me of Carolyn. To help put everyone in the right frame of mind at this critical juncture in the investigation, I said, “Our daughter Carolyn is an ADA in Brooklyn.”

  Ms. Donnelly smiled at that news and commented, “It’s not easy working for Joe Hynes, but she’ll learn a lot.”

  There is, as I knew, an amazing fraternity of law enforcement people, and you should never miss an opportunity to tell a cop or an ADA that your favorite uncle is a cop in the South Bronx—or someplace—and that your daughter, niece, or nephew works for some attorney general somewhere—even if you have to make it up.

  Anyway, it was Detective Jones’s case—he’d caught the squeal, as they say—and he began by inquiring of Susan if she was feeling well and so forth.

  Then he read her her rights and asked her to give a statement regarding what happened this evening. As she began, Detective Jones began writing on his lined paper.

  I understood that it was best if I didn’t say anything, though of course I could have advised my client if I thought she was making an incriminating statement, such as, “I told John to go back upstairs and take care of him.” Then Detective Jones might inquire, “What did you mean by ‘take care of him’?”

  Of course, we were not officially suspects in a homicide, but someone was dead, so Susan and I needed to be careful of what we said.

  I’d already told Susan, before the first detective arrived, to state unequivocally that she believed our lives were in danger and that was why she’d shot a man who was not actually armed at the moment she shot him. I further advised her, as her attorney, to state that the perpetrator had ignored her command to stop and put up his hands and that he lunged at her.

  This was no small technicality, unfortunately, and I didn’t want the grand jury to have any doubts. The reality, of course, was that Susan was aiming for his heart, then wanted to finish off Anthony with a shotgun blast to the face. I certainly understood why she’d want to do that, but I wasn’t sure if the police or the district attorney would understand—especially considering her unjustifiable murder of the alleged assailant’s father.

  Bottom line here was that Susan Stanhope, nice lady that she was, had another side to her personality, which she’d shown ten years ago and which, I hoped, would not show itself again for a while.

  As Susan related her story, Ms. Donnelly jotted a few notes and so did the Homicide Squad supervisor, Lieutenant Kennedy, but they let Susan do all the talking.

  Susan reached the point in her story when Anthony Bellarosa and Tony Rosini literally dragged her up the stairs and into the bedroom, pulled off her robe and panties, and tied her to the bedposts.

  I could see that Ms. Donnelly, too young to be hardened yet by stories of human depravity, was visibly upset. I thought of Carolyn and wondered what a few more years in the Brooklyn DA’s office would do to her.

  Susan, too, was becoming upset at this point in her story, but she took a deep breath and pushed on. She said, “Bellarosa tied me facedown on the bed, then used a belt—I think John’s belt—to beat me on the buttocks . . .”

  I stood and said, “I haven’t heard this, and I don’t need to. Please let me know when Mrs. Sutter comes to the point where I enter the bedroom.”

  I left the office and went outside for some air. By now, there were a half dozen police cars in the forecourt and a number of crime scene vehicles, but the ambulance was gone, and I assumed that they’d taken Anthony’s body to the morgue. Well, I thought, if they didn’t take too long with the autopsy, then Anthony and Uncle Sal could be waked together, maybe in the same funeral home in Brooklyn where Frank had reposed. And then—if the Brooklyn Diocese had no objections—they’d have a double funeral Mass at Santa Lucia, and a double burial in the church cemetery. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Or at least convenient for friends and family. In any case, I’d skip those funerals.

  A uniformed officer found me and escorted me back into the office.

  Susan picked up her story by saying, “I was hoping that John figured out that something was wrong and that he’d called the police . . . but then I heard Anthony’s voice in the hall and another voice, and when I realized it was John, my heart sank . . .”

  I sat and listened to Susan describing from her perspective what happened in the bedroom. Her story and mine differed only in regard to what she was thinking. She stated, for instance, “As I said before, Bellarosa told me that the first thing that would happen when John got there was that he was going to make me kneel on the floor and give him . . . oral sex. So I knew I could . . . bite him and he’d be in such pain that I could roll under the bed and retrieve the shotgun that I’d put there.” She let everyone know, “He made John handcuff himself to the radiator, but he didn’t think I was a threat to him.”

  Well, I’ll bet Anthony rethought that when Susan blew a hole through his chest.

  Susan finished her statement by saying, “He said he was going to kill us, and I knew our lives were in danger. So when I retrieved the shotgun and told him to freeze and put his hands up, he yelled at me, ‘You’re dead, you bitch!’ Then he lunged at me and grabbed for the barrel of the shotgun.” She remembered to add, “I had no choice except to pull the trigger.”

  Detective Jones, Lieutenant Kennedy, and Ms. Donnelly glanced at one another, then Detective Jones said to Susan, “Thank you.” He asked her to read her statement, which she did, then she signed it as did Detective Jones and Lieu
tenant Kennedy. Lieutenant Kennedy and Ms. Donnelly then excused themselves, but I stayed with Susan and Detective Jones, who asked Susan a few questions.

  As Susan replied, I called her travel agent and left a message canceling our trip. Also, we weren’t able to stay in our house, which had become a crime scene, as well as a place that suddenly had bad memories attached, so I called The Creek and booked us a cottage with a late arrival.

  Detective Jones then excused himself, leaving us alone in the office.

  I asked Susan, “How are you doing?”

  She shrugged and replied, “Tired and drained. But . . . I’m feeling this post-traumatic euphoria that the nurse at the hospital said I might experience.”

  “I understand.” I also understood that the euphoria would wear off and that both of us had some tough times ahead. But having to deal with the investigation of what happened was ironically keeping our minds off what happened.

  Detective A. J. Nastasi came into the office, and we exchanged greetings. He expressed his regrets, then he said to us, “I’ve been assigned to assist the Homicide Squad in this case.”

  I nodded. It was remarkable, I thought, how quickly this case had gone from us swearing out a threat complaint against Anthony Bellarosa to homicide. But if we all really thought about it, it was inevitable that this would end with a death—though I was never sure whose death.

  Detective Nastasi said, “I have some information that may interest you, if you’re up to it.”

  We both nodded.

  He informed us, “The All-Safe Security guard on duty here has disappeared, so we think he had a part-time job with Bell Security.” He added, “This guard probably provided Bellarosa and Rosini with the uniforms and also kept Bellarosa—or someone close to him—informed of your movements.”

  I nodded. I knew this was an inside job.

  Detective Nastasi continued, “Everyone assumed that Bellarosa was out of town, but we found a card key in his wallet from a motel in Queens, and the NYPD checked it out, and he’s been there for the last week under an assumed name.” He added, “We found a Chevy Capri parked near his house—one of about twenty cars that are leased by Bell Enterprises—and we’re assuming this was the car he used this week.”